Crazy how with all those copies sold Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman: Absolution are still considered "a failure" for the company.

What idiots. I think 3.4 million is amazing considering all the bad mojo the TR franchise has built up over the years. If someone had asked me, I would have guessed that it would sell just under a million the first week. What the hell were they expecting?

What idiots. I think 3.4 million is amazing considering all the bad mojo the TR franchise has built up over the years. If someone had asked me, I would have guessed that it would sell just under a million the first week. What the hell were they expecting?

To put this into perspective, they're going along with western publishing expectations. Currently, 2 million qualifies as a mild hit, while 5 million qualifies as a big hit (10 million is the envy of any company). Shareholders/investors know this, so marquis AAA games are greenlit in light of those targets. Even if Square Enix wasn't aware of western expectations, the Eidos unit would certainly have communicated the current norms of this business.

In that regard, Deus Ex, Hitman, Sleeping Dogs, and Tomb Raider failed to meet expectations (similiarly, Max Payne 3 was a disappointment to Take 2 at only 3 million). Square Enix set out to challenge EA, UbiSoft, Activision, etc. by producing big hits, so those games missed the mark.

That said, failing to meet expectations says nothing about profitability or long-term brand viability. Square Enix acknowledged that Just Cause 2 and Sleeping Dogs are slow burners (plus they announced a desire to build on Deus Ex), so I don't think brand building is lost on them. I also suspect that they were quick to lower prices to increase player base. However, the reality is that things get greenlit with the 5 million goal.

Anyway, a mild hit tends to be seen as an IP builder - sell two million copies and establish a good brand reputation, then sell five million copies the next time around. This is probably why Take 2 spent so much on BioShock Infinite - they managed 2 million+ copies apiece for the previous games; now they want to seal the deal. Ditto for Crysis 3, which supposedly cost $60 million+ to develop.

Long story short, the AAA business is busted, which is why its future is in question. The MMORPG biz fell into the same trap. WoW came out, everyone pumped $100 million into their clone and expected a similar level of success.......it didn't happen, and the investors bailed.

I don't believe for a second that Tomb Raider isn't profitable. 3.4 million units in four weeks is crazy good by any rational measure. Despite what you say, there are very few games that break 5 million units, and even then it's usually over a longer period of time. If you don't have CoD, GTA, or Halo in your games name you really can't expect that. Also, since those 3.4 million units are just the early sales that means they were all sold at full retail price, no bargain bin deals here. A lot of "slow burning" games have a significant fraction of the units sold at lower prices, so you can't directly compare in terms of revenue.

What I think is really going on here is that S-E is making excuses. If you actually look at their financials it's pretty obvious that revenue for fiscal 2013 is significantly higher than revenue for fiscal 2012. They don't have a sales problem, they have a costs problem, and they were hoping for some super-successful games to mask that issue. In fact, if you look at "digital entertainment" alone it's still profitable. The losses stem entirely from "eliminations or unallocated", whatever the heck that is...

Also, despite the finger-pointing a non-trivial amount of their shortfall compared to the previous projections was due to the social gaming segment underperforming, but you don't hear anyone talking about that (well, to be fair those games cost so little to make that even they underperform in terms of revenue they're certainly still profitable).

Also, despite the finger-pointing a non-trivial amount of their shortfall compared to the previous projections was due to the social gaming segment underperforming, but you don't hear anyone talking about that (well, to be fair those games cost so little to make that even they underperform in terms of revenue they're certainly still profitable).

Which is funny given how Wada was trying to shift development away from consoles and onto the emerging iOS/Browser markets. Not because there isn't at least some wisdom in looking towards mobile/On-line markets but when this and this is the kind of content you put out on those platforms you're not exactly showing any confidence in those markets either.

Now that FF 13-3 is coming out, what are the chances 13-2 is going to get repackaged with the DLC?

Right now at least there are more chances of them putting the DLC at half price than doing a re-release with all the DLC on the disc.

No, there isn't. Square Enix has had at least 5 digiital sales on XBL or PSN since they started releasing FFXIII-2 DLC, and not once did they put anything from their main studio in that sale. I'm frankly getting sick of the double standard Square Enix has with their Japanese development teams and the Western development teams they've scooped up in the past five years.

Huge loss in 2012-2013? Best blame lackluster sales of Hitman and Tomb Raider, instead of all the money being spent on all your own projects in development hell like FFXIII-Versus, or a three year development cycle for a flippin' HD remaster. Or perhaps all that money being thrown at your mobile division releasing failure after failure? No, no, it's got to be that game that only sold 3+ million in a single month.

Logged

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Also, despite the finger-pointing a non-trivial amount of their shortfall compared to the previous projections was due to the social gaming segment underperforming, but you don't hear anyone talking about that (well, to be fair those games cost so little to make that even they underperform in terms of revenue they're certainly still profitable).

While I generally don't like to hear about things failing, I'm kinda happy to hear that.

Yggdrasil: We already have a Tomb Raider thread you yourself made, and while Yoichi Wada resigning IS very relevant to FF it's a big enough deal it merits its own thread. Topics can change naturally, but this is just posting off topic news in the wrong thread.

Yggdrasil: We already have a Tomb Raider thread you yourself made, and while Yoichi Wada resigning IS very relevant to FF it's a big enough deal it merits its own thread. Topics can change naturally, but this is just posting off topic news in the wrong thread.

I just posted that last bit of Tomb Raider because it was somehow directly connected with the news of Yoichi Wada and what not, but I already dropped that whole thing and I'm not gonna post anything about that here.